IRELAND
GlobalPost

* Third cleric to face action for challenging teaching
* Called for reconsideration on contraception, celibacy
* Irish relations with Vatican strained over sex abuse

By Stephen Mangan

DUBLIN, Jan 21 (Reuters) – An Irish Roman Catholic priest said he is being threatened with excommunication by the Vatican because of his advocacy of liberal views on some of the Church’s teachings.

Father Tony Flannery is the third cleric in the past three months to face disciplinary action for challenging Roman Catholic teachings, following the expulsion of a priest in the United States and stripping the title of another in Austria.

Flannery, 66, was suspended last year by the Vatican’s watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for calling for a reconsideration of Church teachings on issues such as contraception, homosexuality, women’s ordination and clerical celibacy.

“One of the threats that the Vatican have…